Mother Teresa


    Nearly 50 years ago, Mother Teresa found a woman "half eaten by maggots and rats" lying in front of a Calcutta hospital. The diminutive Roman Catholic nun sat with the woman until she died. Soon after, she began a campaign for a shelter for people to die with dignity. Until her death Friday she made a mission of caring for the human castoffs the world wanted to forget.
    Accepting the Nobel peace prize in the name of the "unwanted, unloved and uncared for," she wore the same $1 white sari that she had adopted to identify herself with the poor when she founded her order, Missionaries of Charity.
    Her impact was mostly felt in her adopted home, Calcutta, where she directed the Missionaries of Charity for nearly 50 years. But the order's work spread across the globe after 1965, when Pope Paul VI authorized its expansion.
    She created a global network of homes for the poor, from the hovels of Calcutta to the ghettos of New York, including one of the first homes for AIDS victims